My computer locks up and won't boot. What do I do?

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Rahul Lukhan:
If you TRIED to put the P3 chip in the Celeron socket, you might have damaged it.

Or you might have put the Celeron chip back in, backwards. Just a couple thoughts.

Did you remember to earth yourself before tinkering about with the static electricity sensitive components inside your PC first too?

I have never seen a 586 or higher processor that would fit in backwards.. so I doubt that is the case. Sounds like either he bent the pins on the processor, or either he generated an electrostatic discharge while touching the computer parts that may have either damaged the system board, or the processor itself. Make sure you have the power supply cords plugged in properly. (some motherboards have an extra square plugin with a four prong square connector with yellow and black wires coming from the power supply.) Unplug all hardware.. hard drive ..floppy and CD Roms... Then try to boot and see if it gets to the bios screen. Unplug all drive cables from the drives, and all usb devices... the only thing that should be plugged in at this point are the Keyboard, Mouse and Monitor. No drives should have ribbons. Try to boot to the bios and if that fails.. check the pins on the processor, or make sure you didn't plug in a processor other than the original. If you still can't boot the machine, either the processor is fried, or the motherboard took an ESD surge. (It may benefit you to make sure all AGP/PCI or in some cases ISA cards are securely plugged in.... if so... then remove them and try to boot again.)

My brother bought some ram for his computer which turned out the speed was to high for his so he gave it to me. I took out my old ram and it didn't say anything on it so I tried to install the new ram. Nothing happened I hit power it would turn on and nothing would appear on the screen it would just give me the monitor test. After a minute the computer would just shut off so I reinstalled the ram it came with and it is still doing the same thing power up , with nothing appearing on screen, and shut off within a minute. Any idea what could be wrong?

If you're certain that the RAM has been seated properly in its sockets, then it sounds to me like you've damaged your motherboard. Might be time to take it to a technician.

Hi, I hope you guys can help me out!

I have a DELL machine with a master and slave hard disk configuration. Recently upon booting the sequence of events has gone something like this:

* I power up;
* Very strange beeps that are presumably codes, but very fast and rasping so I can't make out the pattern;
* NVIDIA graphics details displayed on screen;
* DELL logo displayed and short wait whilst my RAM is enumerated;
* Short clunky disk access noise (HDD I assume?) and "Operating System Not Found" message displayed;

My machine was ex-business second hand and runs XP Pro - so consequently I lack the system disk or recovery console mentioned above.

My system is currently functioning - this is the bit that scares me - I turned off and rebooted my machine several times, getting the same beeps and errors until on the 6th go there were no beeps and XP started. I read somewhere that this could mean my HDD is getting stuck and needs to be rapidly replaced and/or backed up before it fails completely. However, this would imply that my problems have occurred when the HDD fails to spin, and would it still make the clunky access noises I heard if this were the case? Please point me in the right direction here, I have a lot of data to back up and if anybody thinks I have an imminent HDD crash on my hands I really need to prepare!

Absolutely. I would plan on that hard disk dieing soon. Backups are important even when it's working, but get it backed up and checked out asap.

you have probely damaged your ram with ESD (electrostatic discharge) you will have to buy some new ram for you pc i recomend taking your opld ram with u. also leave ur pc pluged in but turnd of at the switch. before removin the casin of the ram tuch ur pc case on the metalic surface for a minute to release any ESD make sure u insert it the right way and in the right slot!!!! x

Hi, my pc won't boot up, it just beeps a few times and the monitor isn't recieving any signal! ... i'm on Windows XP Home SP2

I installed a new dvd-rw last night, i installed powerdvd that came with it and everything was fine ... i then installed the Nero 6 suite that came with the dvd-rw and my whole computer froze and the screen turned into a rainbow of different colours all over the screen ... i reset my computer but it then wouldn't boot up at all!!! ...

can anyone please help sort it without loosing all my data? cause i have loads of important stuff stored on my hdd!

Carl: I would start by removing the Ram you added and seeing if that makes the problem go away. If it does, then even if it's the "right ram", there's an issue related to it being installed.

Kushal: I am using GPRS internet via my mobile, when I try to connect I get the error "The PPP link control protocol was terminated, this did not happen before, I am using windows XP professional RAM 384 40 GB HDD.

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